Trauma cited in rain of blackbirds

by Elizabeth Weise - Jan. 4, 2011 12:00 AMUSA Today

A mysterious event that caused thousands of red-wing blackbirds to rain down from the sky New Year's Eve in the Arkansas city of Beebe may have occurred when loud noises or fireworks frightened a flock that roosts in a neighborhood, causing them to fly into buildings and other obstacles, a state ornithologist said.

But others still think weather could have played a role.

Preliminary necropsies on the dead birds by the state Livestock and Poultry Commission "showed trauma," said Karen Rowe, an Arkansas Game and Fish Commission ornithologist.

"The birds obviously hit something very hard and had hemorrhages." Beyond that, all the birds were healthy.

The state is also performing chemical and disease testing, but the results will take a week.

Neighbors reported five to 12 booming noises in the eastern part of Beebe, a community of 5,000 northeast of Little Rock. "They reported it sounding like a cannon or transformer exploding," but officials are still investigating to find out what the noises were, Rowe said.

The flock then rose from its roost and tried to fly away, but possibly because of fireworks in the sky "they naturally wouldn't want to go up high," she said. "They were below the roof line, so they were hitting houses, mailboxes, chimneys and walls."

Blackbirds have poor night vision.

The first calls about the incident came in about 11 p.m. on New Year's Eve, according to Keith Stephens of the Game and Fish Commission.

The Department of Emergency Management tested the air and found nothing amiss, so the state isn't putting out any health warnings, he said.

Many theories being floated about causes of the die-off can be discounted, said Dan Cristol, a professor of biology at the Institute for Integrative Bird Behavior Studies at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

The birds couldn't have eaten a fast-acting pesticide because they would have eaten it during the day and died long before they began to roost at night, he said. A slower-acting pesticide wouldn't have affected them all at the same time.

A hailstorm is unlikely because they would have had to be flying for that to happen, and at that hour, red-wing blackbirds are asleep.

Rough weather had hit the state earlier Friday, but the worst of it was well east of Beebe by the time the birds started falling, said Chris Buonanno, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock.

The number of dead blackbirds was more than 3,000, Rowe said. "Environmental Services says they picked up approximately 2,000 birds."

There were others they couldn't reach, she said, and "scavengers probably carried off quite a bit.